Topics - elspic

I'm handling selling all of the computer equipment from an abandoned business and came across a stash of gyration remotes with receivers that I might be able to call first dibs on if anyone else is interested. I'm definitely grabbing one for myself but should be able to grab 5 or 6 more sets. I do have to sell them for the person I'm working for, but I figure I can get away with getting rid of them for $80usd, including shipping to anywhere in the u.s. Shipping overseas would be a little extra. Anyone who is interested, please PM me soon so I can be sure to set enough aside. I'm not sure which model they are exactly; I'll check for sure when I get back to the building this weekend.

In an effort to get things a little more organized I would like to get everyone who has knowledge of the internals of LMCE (hari, ddamron, danielk, TSCHAK, bmac2, etc) and anyone else together for a couple of hours Saturday April 5th to start consolidating what we know and documenting things so that it's easier for more people to start developing. Ideally we'll come out of this with an overview of the different pieces of the system and how they relate to one another, how (and possibly why) the databases are setup, maybe a primer for new devs, and a better idea of just where we stand as a whole. I'll be getting together a list of specific topics that I want to have covered in the next few days, but I would definitely like everybody else's input as well. Please let me know anything that you feel is important to go over and anybody who feels that they can contribute, email me: elspic+lmcedev at gmail.com

Also, since hopefully we'll be coordinating several timezones, please let me know when would be best for everyone in GMT. Thanks all!-elspic

I just got my usb-uirt in and it's automatically detected but I'm not sure off how to add a tv to be controlled. My first instinct was "Wizard -> Devices -> A/V Equipment" but my tv isn't listed (I did add a manufacturer for it). What's the proper way to add a new tv/remote so that LMCE can control it through usb-uirt? -Ruben

Then "Configure Software Raid"For some reason it automatically creates /dev/md0 with /dev/sda1 which is fine with me as it does it as raid 1. Create new md device. I had to select level 1 but other than that the default settings worked for me. When it asks what disks to add, you'll only chose one in the list for each md device that you create. When you finish you end up with something like:

I select ext3 for all file systems and select the noatime option to improve performance a little, but I'm sure you can do what you normally do here. After that just follow the rest of the installer and let it reboot. Once you log in check to make sure your arrays are up (I don't see how you would have finished the install and rebooted otherwise, but still) with:

The [U_] on each line tells us that one disk is up and the other is down, which is as it should be since we haven't told the system about it yet. Now here's a trick my grandpappy taught me:

sfdisk -d

will print the partition info for a drive and sfdisk will partition a disk so combining the two we get:

sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk /dev/sdb

will take the partition table from disk sda and use it to make sdb so. As far as I know that's the best way to be sure 2 partitions are the same size. Now that your drives are partitioned the same, you just have to tell the computer to use the second drive in the arrays:

Notice the [UU] now and the "recovery ="? that means it worked. I think. Someone please tell me if I'm wrong, but once I let all the arrays do a full resync, I can put the cable on either drive (please don't pull both of them unless you're super cool and have a spare drive installed) and other than a short slowdown on the desktop, the system doesn't seem to be affected. I haven't figured out how to get the system to see the drive when I plug it back in without a restart though so if anyone knows that, I'd appreciate it.

Ok, now our base system is up and running and it's time to install linuxmce.

I go off the recommended path here again and upgrade a couple things because I'm lazy. First I comment the line for the cd out of /etc/apt/sources.list and run

apt-get update

and

apt-get install ssh smbfs

ssh because I wanted to get info to write this and I just kind of like being connected from my desktop and smbfs is because I can't be bothered to burn the LinuxMCE iso's and just copy them to the kubuntu desktop from the network (I've installed lmce many times trying to get it to work properly). I don't think you actually have to install smbfs since you can just use the network browser from the desktop without it, but I haven't had a problem with it so far. I then mount the iso of the packages cd (or just put the cd in)

which will put the install icon on the desktop. At this point we're at LMCE install proper and I've got to say that from the installer on I've been very impressed with the improvements in RC1 over the previous releases. It's not perfect yet, but it's made a great stride towards being something I would think belongs in a mainline distro or package. One problem I noticed still happening is that after I start the installation and it restarts for the nvidia driver, my screen resolution is a lot lower than it should be or was before. I finally traced this to the line:

Option "UseEdid" "False"

in xorg.conf. By commenting it out, the specified resolution is used.Log back in and restart the installer. I chose hybrid and Primarily a media PC and simply followed the prompts through until it asked for the cd's. Here I'll mention that if you tell it you have an iso on the drive (if you were cool enough just to copy the images to the local machine) for all 3 cd's (especially the kubuntu cd), it seems to take a LOT less time to cache them. I'm sure I had a couple errors in my install, however it finally finishes and asks me to restart. When it does it automatically loads up the core and MD software after a little while. I think this is where people are just getting impatient. With every install I've done, as long as I wait until I'm sure the system is ready for the next step, I haven't had any problems other people are reporting. As far as setup, I'd recommend just following the onscreen guide (good job with the videos, but I'd put a control so she doesn't keep repeating herself over and over) and connect your periphrials when you get to each screen. My air-mouse and hdhomerun were both detected automatically, as were my windows shares. I'm still waiting on my usb-uirt to come in so I can control the tv. Same with my z-wave controller, but I do have the z-wave system working with the ha07 remote on it's own, so I'm fairly certain it will work with little issue. I'll definitely post an update when everything comes in, but I'm really impressed so far. I've also got a nokia 770 I picked up intending to use it for a mobile orbiter so when I get that compiled and working, I'll be even happier. -Ruben